- By gathering retail prices from around the world, William Masters and colleagues examine the affordability of the EAT-Lancet healthy diet, and find out that many people around the world cannot afford such food.
- The Kenyan government is forcing importers to use a costly new Chinese-built railway from the main Port, hiking prices by up to 50% for shippers, due to the high fees needed to repay the Chinese backers of the project.
- Maggie Fick reflects on the impact of Ethiopia’s democratisation on its ubiquitous surveillance network.
- Why gender is an important part of migration policy? This blog reminds us that migration is not gender neutral. Women migrate for different reasons, to different places, in different ways, and face different risks and outcomes from migration than men.
- According to Julian Lampietti and Elizabeth Ash, the Digital Agricultural Revolution will reduce tracking and verification costs, allowing better-informed lenders to move away from using land as collateral. Ultimately, they argue, this could expand credit access to smallholders and improve welfare.
- Linda Calabrese has released the last issue of ODI’s round-up on China and global development for 2019. It covers China’s aid management system, financing the BRI initiative, and experimental methods of poverty alleviation in China.
- Dietrich Vollrath’s Fully Grown argued improvements in material living standards, women’s rights, and contraception has led to a decline in fertility rates, which has now put a drag on the growth rate due to population aging. In this piece, Vollrath looks at a new paper by Hugo Hopenhayn, Julian Neira and Rish Singhania, adding to his argument that increased immigration is key to countering slowing economic growth.
- In this short video, Christopher Woodruff explains how his research has improved México’s labour court, by providing information to workers before trial to speed up the system.
- Landry Signé looks at how the France-backed African CFA franc works as an enabler and barrier to development for some African countries.
Aid links: the cost of eating well for the world’s poor, more
Links and stories from the aid and development sectors.
Harvesting rice in Tangerang, Indonesia, where rice is still imported (Photo: Riau Images via Getty)
Published 18 Dec 2019
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